Gianna's Top Twenty of 2014, Day 3

Non Fiction

I read a ton of non fiction this year; I don’t know if it was by coincidence, or the just fact that the year produced so many outstanding books. Either way it was a really rich year and I learned a lot.  I also got pissed off a lot, which is always excellent.

 We’ve all read books that we credit with changing our lives, putting us on a different course. For me, two of the books came to me very close together; Dead Man Walking and Actual Innocence. I am now embarrassed with how fervently I once defended the death penalty, that it was only after reading Sister Helen Prejean that I had the courage to dig a little deeper. It also sent me on a life long quest to become Sister Helen’s best friend, but that’s another story (and possibly a more disturbing one).

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson is a book for a new generation, a reminder that in many ways, we are still in the early stages of rebuilding a legal system that is so clearly in need of an overhaul.

Fiction

Bark  was the book I was most looking forward to reading in 2014, the first collection of stories from Lorrie Moore in 16 years (that's 832 weeks!). Moore is dark, she's funny, she's is so fucking spot on that it's almost hard to believe. Was I disappointed that there were only a handful of stories here? Yes, I'm greedy and thankless. 

Here's the thing though: two of the eight stories are so devastatingly good and satisfying that I actually forgot that only eight stories made up the book. I also parsed that shit out, I'm not an idiot, she hasn't published a collection in 16 years, I refused to gobble it up in one sitting. One a day for a week. You know what that means? That's right, now I only have to wait 831 weeks for her next collection. Shaved off a week. It's called planning ahead, kids. #schoolin'

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 16

Best Young Novelists

My favorite literary magazine is Granta and I am going to talk you into a subscription. Well, I am going to talk you into at least buying one copy. Baby steps.  Granta recently announced their list of Best Young British Novelists, something they do once a decade.  Now, before we get to that, you may ask "Well, what kind of track record do these clowns at Granta have in picking great writers?"  And to you I say two things: 1.Calm down 2. Why so negative all the time? Why not just trust that Granta is going to hand you a list of truly promising talent; why do you need proof? You’re that jaded?

Have you ever heard of William Faulkner? Is that impressive enough for you?  Granta didn’t discover him, of course, but I sort of just want to gauge what impresses you. Since you’re not easily impressed, I will start off with a writer that will send you running for your checkbook: A.A. Milne. That’s right, Winnie the Pooh. Let me throw some other names at you: Sylvia Plath (who, you know, could have benefited from a bit of Winnie the Pooh in her life), Stevie Smith (who I was obsessed with at one point), and Ted Hughes (did he not go anywhere without Sylvia?).

You want recent names, don’t you? You’re bored with the past? Well the past ain’t bored with you. Salman Rushdie, A.L. Kennedy, Jeanette Winterson, Zadie Smith,  Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, Martin damn Amis, and Will Self. You need a minute to take all that in. I understand.

 

You could be reading these guys before anyone else in your house does. Unless you're at Lizzy's house, where it's just Liz and Zorro. So sad. Do you know how good it's going to feel when you are sitting around the dinner table discussing the Man Booker Prize (like most American families are prone to do) and someone says, “Oh I was so surprised that David Mitchell was long listed for the Booker?” And that’s where you bust in and say, “What? The man is pure genius! I first read him when Granta published him years ago, you dummy! I want a divorce!” Uh, and you can finally get a divorce from a man who doesn’t appreciate David Mitchell the way he should be. Or you know, you can just work it out; it's your marriage, I’m just laying out options.

Here are your 2013 Best Young British Writers (and yes Zadie Smith is on here, but it's not her fault she is still so young): Evie Wyld [I love her], David Szalay, Adam Thirlwell, Kamila Shamsie, Naomi Alderman, Tahmima Anam, Ned Beauman, Jenni Fagan, Adam Foulds, Xiaolu Guo (call Liz for a correct pronunciation), Sarah Hall (call Gianna for a correct pronunciation), Steven Hall, Joanna Kavenna, Benjamin Markovits, Nadifa Mohamed, Helen Oyeyemi, Ross Raisin, Sunjeev Sahota, Taiye Selsi, and the great Zadie Smith.

I know it’s pretty annoying that over half are women and the list is incredibly diverse. Sigh, what can you do, progress.

Who are some American writers that Granta helped get started? Glad you asked. Mona Simpson, Edwidge Danticat, Ethan Canin, Sherman Alexie, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lorrie Moore, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Karen Russell.  Also, Jonathan Franzen, you know it’s hard to keep the riff raff out.

So there you have it.  If you want to be ahead of the curve on the very best writing and art in the world, subscribe to Granta. If not, don’t, but I think you’re going to look like a dumb dumb at the dinner table. Unless you're Liz and eat all of your meals on the couch because she's just sad.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 2

Day 2: Favorite Short Story

We're fans of the short form.

Gianna:

Short stories are my favorite format. Not because I am lazy (well…not only because I am lazy), but because I am completely mesmerized by the art. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about some of my favorite story writers and some of the first stories I read before I get to what will surely be an obvious choice for me.

When I was thinking about the first collection of short stories I bought and read on my own, it was – brace yourselves literary snobs - Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes. Still have it, still love it. Deal with it. But the two stories that really got me hooked on the “stuff” were "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "Where are You Going ,Where Have You Been?" by HRH Joyce Carol Oates. After reading the Oates, I went oh, so … and forgive me if you aren’t a literary person for using a pretentious book biz term…but I went “ape shit.” Then I read every JCO story I could find. From there it was done. James Joyce’s "The Dead," Raymond Carver (I went through a major Carver phase; shut up), "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Marquez broadened the stories that I read, Alice Munro remains one of my favorite writers (is she under-read or is that my imagination?), the oh, oh so beautiful The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (this book takes my breath away – I will forever read whatever he writes – write it down - I am a sucka for Tim). Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is a favorite. Amy Bloom, though I loved the novel Away, I will always prefer her stories – amazing story writer. Miranda July is insane – so sick with talent – her collection No One Belongs Here More Than You makes this list because she truly reignited my love of stories when I hadn’t read an amazing collection in a couple of years. She made me a believer again. July’s book would make my list of top 20 ss collections. Period. Lorrie Moore is a master and Birds of America is a work of art to the highest degree. If you have not read Birds of America, go buy it. If you have never read short stories, of if you think you don’t like short stories, or if you tried stories and didn’t love them, or if you think you don’t like me [I'm doubting my like at the moment], Birds of America is going to change ALL of that…MOST of that. It’s perfect. It is.

After all that it’s a little, well, awkward to now mention my actual favorite short story is not by Lorrie Moore; it is by Flannery O’Connor. Listen, it’s not easy to pick one O’Connor story, so I may change my mind later. "Good Country People." The thing about this story is you’ve got a woman who you sort of want to feel bad for because she has a prosthetic leg from a childhood accident, but she really is not very likable because she feels and acts pretty superior to everyone around her. She has a PhD and the country folk just aren’t up to her standards. Well, she meets a Bible salesman and she wants to uh… spend some time with him in the barn as the kids say. [They really do say that in my podunk hometown.  The auction barn was the place to party when I was in high school.  And more than one girl lost her virginity behind an auto repair garage.  I'm surprised more babies are named Ford or Mercedes in classy Woodville.  I digress....] Classic ending. Not one of the more gory O’Connor stories, but I would say it's actually her sexiest story. And by sexy there is a barn in the story….how’s that?

PS: Second favorite O’Connor story: "The River" which will break your heart (actually this may be my favorite...see it's hard to pick one. I hate this.)

Liz:

GREAT book.
You should read it.

Many of my favorites overlap with Gianna's.  I've already written of my love for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" here, and I also think that Amy Bloom is a story genius, particularly with "Silver Water."  There's a chilling, Gothic story called "How Far She Went" by Mary Hood that will make you hold your breath at the end.  Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily" is required reading; I mean, Miss Emily's been sleeping with the corpse of her boyfriend for years.  You can't really beat that.  I love Annie Proulx's collection Close Range, which gave us "Brokeback Mountain."  Nam Le's The Boat and Andrew Porter's The Theory of Light and Matter are two amazing debut collections that declared two major talents emerging on the literary horizon.  Jhumpa Lahiri and Alice Munro are genre masters.

My favorite short story, though, is "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  A story with Gothic tendencies, a woman's increasing insanity, and feminist relevance?  Yes, please.  (For the record, "feminist," contrary to the current backlash with women who seem afraid they won't land a man, is not a dirty word.  Neither is "liberal."  Moving on....)  A young married woman, struggling with hysteria (depression), is taken to the country for a rest cure.  Her husband positions her in an upstairs room in a house.  The room is decorated with a distinctive, ugly, yellow wallpaper.  As the woman's isolation becomes more and more extreme, she slips further into madness and the wallpaper becomes her fixation.  It's a creepy, compelling, perpetually relevant story.  It's also one that I heard read to me by my mother's students when I was a kid.  Yes, my childhood was screwed up.